Former mailman builds geothermal greenhouse in the midwest; gets local citrus all year for $1 a day

Video screen capture YouTube/Harvest Public Media Greenhouse in the Snow, built by a former mailman, grows an abundance of local produce high on the Nebraska plains. "We can grow the best citrus in the world, right here on the high plains,” says Russ Finch, the former mailman (pictured above) who is the creative superstar genius responsible for building the Greenhouse in the Snow. And he can do it spending only $1 a day in energy costs. For Midwesterners (and many of the rest of us) produce in the winter means things imported form warmer climes or grown in greenhouses, which typically have a prodigious hunger for energy and are fed by burning fossil fuels. But by harnessing the Earth’s natural internal heat to warm a greenhouse, oranges and other tropical treats thrive without the waste and pollution typically found in so much agriculture. Finch’s structure is a take on a walipini – a brilliant design that TreeHugger has written about (and which remains one of our most popular posts: Build a $300 underground greenhouse for year-round gardening ). As Grant Gerlock writes at NPR , the floor is dug 4 feet below the surface, the roof is slanted toward […]

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